Mon pays — c’est l’hiver

This is the title of a song, if not an anthem, popularized in Québec by
Gilles Vigneault. The lyrics describe how adaptation to the New Land’s most
difficult season coalesced the settlers of New France into a people.

In year 2001, how does winter define us?

While most Pontiac residents are enjoying (else enduring) winter, other
Quebeckers are reading Le Soleil de la Floride, else Âllo-Police
or the Journal de Montréal in balmy Florida. In fact, a microcosm of
Quebec flourishes near Fort Lauderdale, where during winter approximately half a
million Quebecers evade snow for three months. Hmm… perhaps their refrain
would be “Mon pays, c’est Floride.”

In his book Sacre Blues, author Taras Grescoe notes, “Somewhere
between bohemian Key West, where Michel Tremblay can be seen riding his bicycle,
and stinking-rich Jupiter, where Céline Dion has a $10-million mansion, lies
“Floribec,” a five-kilometre wide coastal strip that has become a de facto,
low-rent suburb of urban Québec.”

Winter once represented serious hardship for a largely rural Québec
population. The snow covered gardens and fields, impeding most outside work. But
in our region, as snowfall came, many men headed to the lumber camps leaving
wives and children to cope until spring melt and the logging boom returned their
menfolk home. For the lumberjacks, winter represented gruelling work from dawn
to dusk, and nights weren’t much better in crowded, louse-infested shanties.

Mon pays, c’est l’hiver….

Whether we flee its wrath by heading to Florida or enjoy its chill, since
Europeans first landed here in Canada, we’ve recognized it as a force to be
reckoned with. The earliest settlers of Quebec from France coined a whole new
language to describe winter’s various forms.

Says author Grescoe, “First there was the averse, the little
snowfall; then the bordée or abât, the full-fledged snowstorm,
which could drop up to two metres of snow on a village at a time. Between the pluie
verglaçante, the freezing rain that bowed thick birch limbs to the ground,
and the tempête des coneilles — the late-winter snowstorm —
there were endless poudreries, whiteouts of blowing snow. … Even the
winds had to be assigned special names: the surouêt, the southwest wind
that heralded warmer weather, was nothing next to the dreaded nordet,
from the icy north Atlantic, the wind that brought the worst blizzards.”

Winter also was the time for community. It was a time for music, for the
grand oral tradition practiced by northern cultures throughout the world whereby
grandparents embellished tales ‘round the wood fire. It was downtime, where
outside physical activity was lessened, replaced by time spent mending tools and
clothing.

But after the early 1900s, when rural Quebecers flocked to urban centres and
the factories of New England, desperate for work, we viewed winter differently.
It became an event which many people could escape.

City streets are swept as clear of offending snowflakes as quickly and
thoroughly as possible. Montréal’s Underground City — like Toronto’s
subway system — permits residents to thumb their noses at the bitter
chill outside. It’s entirely possible to live throughout winter without “sensible”
winter clothing of any sort and by that I mean tuques, mittens — and
lunar-like boots. Indeed, winter is frequently viewed as a playground… if you
don’t live in it daily, as we Pontiac residents do.

In contrast to city dwellers, winter in the Pontiac countryside would be
impossible without adequate, serious protection. Here in our neck of Québec’s
wintery woods, we must be hardy and here, truly, “mon pays, c’est vraiement
l’hiver.” We need to stock our vehicles with emergency gear because if the
going gets perilous on either Highway 148 or the backroads, our lives can be at
risk. Folks like you and me expand to Michelin-like proportions as we don our
snowmobile suits, arctic boots, toques and mittens before heading outside.

And choring takes on daunting proportions in winter. It’s hard labour to
keep pastured livestock fed and watered during the long, cold months where
watering troughs can freeze solid all too quickly. And it’s not just cold for
farmers. What about outdoor workers from Hydro Québec? What about those hardy
souls who stagger through drifts to refill our thirsty oil tanks?

Yes, winter continues to define us.

Whatever the language, whatever the century, winter defies us with freezing,
cold weather.

And we have to realize in 2001 that technology cannot save us from nature:
sure, some who are so-inclined and who can afford it can hop a plane for a
palm-tree-studded beach. And undeniably, clever inventions can help us cope with
winter, whether we live in cities or in the Pontiac coountryside.

In his book, Grescoe notes, “Year after year, Environment Canada tells us
average winter temperatures are reaching record highs… Among the world’s
scientists — particularly those whose research isn’t subsidized by
fossil fuel companies — there’s a growing consensus that unstabilized
levels of greenhouse gases, by raising temperatures, will likely lead to extreme
weather events. In Québec, that means floods, freezing rain, heavy snowstorms.”

By all accounts, Grescoe’s right. Here at our farm in 1998 we enjoyed the
novelty of six days without power while nestled in our wood-stove comfort. Easy
for us to say, without livestock to water and feed. But we wouldn’t care to
repeat that situation often.

Will we? Indicators point to more winters of freezing rain. This means more
power outages, certainly until powerlines are buried underground or until
technology “saves us from ourselves.”

As if.

However, unlike Québec “snowbird” migrants, our winged songbirds aren’t
so fortunate. The cerulean warbler is on Canada’s national list of endangered
species… one of our Québec warblers that some of you may know. Human beings
are destroying its natural habitat, not only here in the province, but also its
southern wintering grounds in South America.

The Canadian Nature Federation (CNF) website
(http://www.cnf.ca/bird/mindo.html )informs us that a “significant wintering area under threat
is in northern Ecuador in Mindo ­- the first Latin American site to be
designated as a globally significant Important Bird Area (IBA). Mindo received
this designation because of its large concentration of bird species — it
is home to nearly 5 per cent (450) of the world’s 10.000 species, including 30
that are found nowhere else.”

How is Canada, and therefore us, linked to Mindo? The CNF site explains: “A
decision made recently by Ecuadorian President Gustavo Noboa to consider
building a pipeline through Mindo will place these birds in greater peril. A
Canadian company, Alberta Energy Company, along with a consortium of U.S.,
Italian, Spanish, Argentinian and Ecuadorian oil companies, is playing a key
role. Ironically, some of these companies that are about to wreak havoc in one
of the most important wilderness areas in South America pride themselves for
their support of biodiversity projects.”

Winter defines me; defines you. How you and I choose to act, as human beings,
may largely be a matter of personal choice. What the warblers can do is not:
they adapt or perish. Canadians are implicated participants in the process of
habitat destruction.

Now that 2001 has dawned, I suppose all of us would agree now that the New
Millennium has arrived. Will we finally learn, this millennium, that our actions
define not only ourselves, but directly affect the natural world in which we
live?

*****

Katharine Fletcher is a writer based near Quyon, Québec. Contact her at
fletcher.katharine@gmail.com, check out her website at www.chesleyhouse.ca, else read her
column at www.theequity.qc.ca.